Sunday, January 15, 2017

After early neglect Johannes
Vermeer's ascendancy in the world of art has been rapid. He painted what are regarded as some of the most precious
paintings of northern Europe. People admired his colours and his
compositional technique which produced quiet genre paintings of women
going about everyday tasks. Every painting draws the viewer in, yet does not yield its mystery no longer how long one views it.

Jan Vermeer van Delft from the figure at left in black beret of the painting ‘The Procuress’, which critics hold to be an authentic effigy of the young Vermeer

He
remained poor all his working life and never left Delft, his
hometown. He had but one major patron (Van Ruijven) who left his own daughter a legacy of 20 paintings by Vermeer. Vermeer had eleven
children to feed and depended on rents brought in by his
mother-in-law, Maria Thins, for pursuing his passion to paint. In the
end a ruinous war destroyed the art market and a defensive measure by
the Dutch to flood the lowlands by opening the dykes inundated his
mother-in-law's rental houses. That brought on destitution for the
Vermeer family; he descended into despondency and mania and died,
leaving behind 34 works, now considered priceless.

Meera, KumKum, Zakia, Saras

Tracy
Chevalier mentions she must have seen three of Vermeer's paintings at
the National Gallery of Art growing up in Washington, D.C., but none
evoked a response at the time. It was later when she saw a poster of
the Girl with a Pearl Earring in her sister's apartment that
she was stirred and got one for herself.

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Vermeer

Slowly the idea grew to
write the story behind the painting as a historical novel, rooted
faithfully in the times. It was to be Ms Chevalier's second novel,
the one that made her famous and got her a film contract in addition.

Sunil, Thommo, & Hemjit

The novel is
not literary, but there are several quotes that stand out:

But
what is the story in the painting?
— Griet's father asks her

I
would never stop working on a painting if I knew it was
not
complete.— Vermeer to Griet

During the session the women readers graciously posed in the way Vermeer had Griet pose for his famous painting, the GWAPE pose. Here is the first by Priya:

Priya in GWAPE pose with nose-ring

The readers gathered for a picture after the enjoyable session which concluded with Hemjit's spread of sandwiches and cutlets, to celebrate his birthday on Jan 16:

Eight of us met for reading
the novelby Tracy Chevalier, her second, and most famous one
— selected by Shoba and Pamela. We also celebrated the proximate
birthday of Hemjit on Jan 16; and sang for him before having the
wonderful sandwiches and cutlets sent by his wife, Sugandhi.

The goodies Hemjit brought, made by his wife, Sugandhi

Present: Saras,
Pamela, Zakia, Thommo, Sunil, Joe, KumKum, Hemjit

Guest: Meera,
daughter of Saras, visiting from Mumbai

Absent:
Kavita (busy with guests at her estate), Shoba (bereavement in the
family), Priya (unwell), Preeti

The date for the next
reading is as follows:

Sat
Feb 11, 2017, noon – Poetry at Kavita's estate in
Thodupuzha

Fri
Mar 10, 2017, 5:30pm – Americanah by Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie

The Procuress, 1656 - Vermeer self-portrait is on the left, critics think

Thommo showed us the replica
of a white and blue Delft house which is given as a gift to every
business-class traveller by KLM. His brother, Chax, worked in ABN
AMRO Bank N.V., headquartered in Amsterdam, and used to travel there
often. As a result he has a virtual row of Delft blue houses:

Thommo holds model of Delft house, which his brother used to get as a gift every time he flew KLM business class to the Netherlands

Pamela as a selector of this
novel introduced it to the readers with a few words she read off the
Web, which Joe has expanded below.

The Girl with a Pearl
Earring is universally recognised as one of Johannes Vermeer's
masterworks. The work still poses significant questions. Who was the
sitter and was the painting even intended as a portrait? Did Vermeer
sell the painting during his lifetime? Why was the original
background a deep transparent green rather than the black we see
today? Was the pearl a real one? What significance did the turban
have? Which painting procedures did Vermeer employ? What pigments did
he use?

These are some of the
questions that led Tracy Chevalier into the novel.

In an interview Tracy
Chevalier says she grew up in Washington D.C. but has been an expat
in London for long. She believes she has to describe the minutiae of
her character’s lives and so visits the scenes she is going to use
in her novels to absorb that. Here’s a quote about her writing
methods:

“I read what I wrote
the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer
paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain. I try to write
1,000 words a day – about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I
feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.”

Thommo, Hemjit, Pamela, KumKum

She finds it very difficult
to get the dialogue to sound as if it was of the period and we can
see that in GWAPE. Usually her characters are made up, but surrounded
by real stuff. In this novel even the characters are taken from
history for the most part, except Griet herself, the central
character and narrator. Chevalier has written 7 novels after GWAPE,
none as successful as GWAPE, which has sold 4m copies worldwide and
has been made into a successful film starring Colin Firth as Vermeer
and Scarlett Johansson as Griet in 2003, see
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335119/.

that it was wonderful to get
the validation of her as a writer by attracting that wide readership,
but claims it could not have happened without Vermeer himself having
attained great fame in the twentieth century. That success made
it harder to write her next novels - there are eight of them now and
a book of short stories. Writing GWAPE in a single voice, that of
Griet, was more or less an obvious choice for Chevalier but her later
books have had several voices, and she considers multiple voices a
technique worth using. That the story should be about this imagined
maid-servant who stares out of the painting, rather than about the
painter himself, was not so obvious. Perhaps this was the feminist in
the author, believing artists have lots written about them, but not
much is known, and even less written, about their models.

Meera, KumKum, Zakia, Saras

On the identity
of the the girl in the painting she told an interviewer

In the painting the
girl’s clothes are very plain compared to other Vermeer ladies, and
yet the pearl is clearly luxurious. I was fascinated by that
contrast, and it seemed to me that the pearl was not hers. At the
same time, I also felt the girl knew Vermeer well, as her gaze is
very direct and knowing. So I thought, "She knows him, she’s
close to him, but she’s not well off. Who is she?" His
servant. It just seemed right.

Chevalier also made Vermeer
occupy a different part of the house, imagining he could not have had
the calm to paint his tranquil scenes with 11 children around him.
Chevalier saw Vermeer paintings first at the National Gallery of Art
in DC where there are three Vermeers (A Lady Writing, Woman
with a Balance, Girl in a Red Hat) but she did not respond
to them. Her response came when she saw a poster of Girl with a
Pearl Earring which her sister had hung in her apartment. She
looked at it and thought, "My God, she’s striking," and
went out the next day and bought a poster for herself.

Griet licks her lips on the master's orders

As she was writing the novel
she had a bottle of linseed oil open, and a catalogue of Vermeer
paintings beside her, because many of them are referenced in the
book. Take a look at the website of the book

In the painting the pearl is
small, said Thommo. But it seems larger than most pearls drooping
from women's ears in modern times. Who commissioned the painting? Was
it Van Ruijven, the patron of Vermeer, who ended up historically
owning about 20 of Vermeer's paintings more than half his output?
That is how the novel makes it out to be.

The maid-servant gets the
unwelcome attention of the randy patron whenever he visits. Van
Ruijven acted as though he had licence to grope her and the
difference in power status gave him immunity. Sunil said it would not
be much different in modern times . The film Maid in Manhattan
was cited; but that's the case of a US senatorial candidate falling
for a hotel room-service maid, thinking she is a socialite when he
sees her trying on a wealthy woman's dress.

Pamela said the novel was
full of gossip, everybody is talking about goings on elsewhere. Much
like a Mallu village, she said. Thommo said ‘gossip’ is the same
the world over.

Pamela noted that in the
book Vermeer never says or hints that he is in love with Griet. True,
said Joe, however the film, by contrast, makes out a certain
closeness in scenes; for example, both of them get under the cloak of
the camera obscura together in the film, whereas in the novel, they
view the scene separately. The film also adds an erotic dimension in the ear-piercing, when Vermeer heats the needle to pierce her ears, a job
she does herself in the novel. For a discussion see A
Pearl of Great Price. From Vermeer's side there was not even the vague
thought of a romance; from her side it was more awe than anything
else, seeing a supreme master working at his craft.

Meera mentioned that the
master of the house, Vermeer, was only interested in her as a model
for his art, and was impressed by her sensitivity to colour,
arrangement, and her attention to his painting needs.

Thommo raised the point that
the whole story behind the pearl in the novel is fictional. There's
no proof Vermeer used his wife's jewelry; the inventory of assets at
his death (of which there is an accurate historical record) does not
show it.

KumKum raised the point: how
could a husband give away a portion of his wife's personal jewelry in
his will? Joe said there's nothing unusual about it for the times. It
was a patriarchal society. Even in 19th century America and UK women
once married, did not own anything according to the law, not even
what they brought upon entering into the marriage.

Joe thought that the reason
for the gift of pearls to Griet from Vermeer as a legacy could be his sense of
guilt at not having stood by her when she was falsely accused by his
wife of stealing the pearls.

According to Hemjit,
Catharina was out of her league with Vermeer, having no interest or
curiosity in his work. This is evident from Vermeer's answer, “You
and the children are not a part of this world. You are not meant to
be.”

Thommo said it was a fecund excess
of children that made him bankrupt; eleven born to Catharina,
survived.

This immediately put Sunil
in mind of someone he knew in Fort Kochi who had ten boys and four
girls. Once when Sunil came to shop for bread at Elite Hotel on
Princess Street, he saw this gentleman staggering out with a huge
package, and asked him if he was having a party at home. The response
was, “Are you making fun of me? Do you know how many loaves are
needed to feed my offspring?”

2.
Hemjit

Hemjit's two short passages
convey Griet's appreciation of composition and colours, and her quick
learning from the few words of Vermeer teaching her how to ‘see’
as an artist would. First it is the arrangement of five vegetables as
she slices them in the kitchen: red
cabbage,
onions, leeks, carrots, and turnips. Then it is discovering
that white clouds are often composed of several other colours as
well.

Thommo
confessed that all the men in the novel are attracted by the young
maid-servant. She must have been a good looker. But Griet is repelled
by Van Ruijven, the old lecher whose desire for the GWAPE painting of her
must have corresponded to his desire to possess her. She is more
responsive to Pieter the butcher's son, and seems to have formed an
early hankering to marry him, for his meat and his blond curls. No
real romance there, only a willingness of the flesh for meaty
reasons.

3.
Thommo

The central question of this
passage is Griet's allegation that there is a difference between
Catholic Painting and Protestant painting. Vermeer puts this to the
test, since he has was born Protestant, and converted to Catholicism
after his marriage to Catharina Bolnes. In the end Vermeer answers
the question like this:

“It’s not the
painting that is Catholic or Protestant,” he said,
“but the
people who look at it, and what they expect to see. A
painting in a
church is like a candle in a dark room—we use it
to see better. It
is the bridge between ourselves and God. But it
is not a Protestant
candle or a Catholic candle. It is simply a
candle.”

Yet the servant girl despite her being untutored has hinted at a difference: Catholic painters made many
more paintings with a religious purpose than Protestant painters.
Perhaps it arose purely from a difference of patronage, with the
Church and Catholic royalty funding many of the paintings on the one
hand, whereas rich merchants (like Van Ruijven) commissioned
paintings in the Protestant north of Europe.

Thommo thought it fantastic
that a simple house-maid could fathom her master's psychology from
his movements to such a depth as this passage reveals:

I had learned to gauge
his mood, not from the
little he said or the expression on his
face—he did not show
much—but from the way he moved about the
studio and attic.
When he was happy, when he was working well, he
strode purposefully
back and forth, no hesitation in his stride, no
movement
wasted. If he had been a musical man, he would have
been
humming or singing or whistling under his breath.

The author has gone
overboard in trying to endow Griet with the ability to divine her
master's moods. KumKum said Tracy Chevalier had to bring Griet out of
the painting and make her a living character as part of her
novelistic attempt to find the story behind the painting.

4.
Sunil

Griet has grown in artistic
sensibility by watching her master at work and the fruit of that
progress is her intervention in a painting to add an element which
was not there at the beginning. She realised some ‘disorder’ was needed as an
element in the picture A Lady Writing ‘to
snag the eye.’ She waited for Vermeer to make the change she
thought necessary and when that did not happen she took the
initiative and boldly

pulled the front
part of
the blue cloth onto the table so that it flowed out of the
dark
shadows under the table and up in a slant onto the table
in front of
the jewelry box.

At night she checks if
Vermeer had made the change corresponding to the blue cloth and finds

he had re-sketched
in
reddish brown the folds of the blue cloth. He had made my change.

When Vermeer asks next day
why she made the change, Griet gives an erudite reply befitting a
student of the fine arts. And Vermeer has to concede, “I
had not thought I would learn something from a maid.”

Joe
provided some background he had gathered from a video on Youtube (The
madness of Vermeer part 4) about how Vermeer went bankrupt and
died. The war with Spain in 1672 had destroyed the art market. On top
of that the Dutch resorted to their standard defensive manoeuvre when
faced by invaders: they flooded the land which is on average 2m below
sea-level, by opening the dykes. To Vermeer's misfortune the houses
of Maria Thins on rent were inundated and that stopped the only other
source of income. Catharina Bolnes in a testamentary document gives
witness that Vermeer lapsed into decay and decadence thereafter, and
died.

5.
Joe

In the passage Joe chose,
Catharina confronts Griet about the earrings she is wearing in the
painting, her earrings. Though Maria Thins and Vermeer are
there and could defend her from the charge of having stolen the
earrings, they remain silent. Enraged, Catharina lunges for the
palette knife of Vermeer and makes a dash to slash the painting with
it, but Vermeer is quicker, and restrains her; the knife falls and
spins pointing toward Griet's feet. It is the most dramatic scene in
the novel.

Thommo recounted that the
novel starts with a knife, where she is chopping vegetables and
arranging them according to colours in a circular fashion. And near
the end of the novel also here is a scene with a knife. Perhaps it is
a dramatic reinforcement, said KumKum, but violence is hardly the
theme of the novel.

Thommo raised the question
of how a man could will his wife's earrings to a another person. It
seems the man owned everything. The law was like that.

“How they tortured us!”,
KumKum cried out, in a general denunciation of male patriarchy. The
rest of the readers chimed in satirically.

Pamela declared that Joe
would claim, Njan oru paavam aney (I am a hapless bloke, in
Malayalam). She alluded to the image of the Tree of Life in the Bible which occurs in the first book, Genesis, and recurs in the last book, Revelation, analogous to the knife in this novel.

6.
Saras

Saras in GWAPE pose

Griet has been working at
the Vermeer household for a while. When she visits her parents on
Sunday her father, a tile-painter, now gone blind from an accident,
interrogates her about her master's paintings. She describes the
painting Woman With a Water Jug in graphic terms so he could
envision it in his mind.

Woman with a Water Jug - Vermeer

He gets confused by her description and asks
in the end for clarification: “But what
is the story in the painting?” Griet answers that her master's
paintings ‘don't tell stories.’

Ironical
said Joe, for in one sense, the entire novel is an attempt to find
the story behind a single painting, Girl
with a Pearl Earring. One art
critic has said that Vermeer is absent from the scenes he paints, and
he always leave the viewer guessing what is the story. In a sense
that is what makes for the lasting allure of a painting such as
GWAPE, or the Mona Lisa.

7.
Zakia

Zakia in GWAPE pose

Griet accompanies the senior
servant, Tanneke, to the meat market to buy stuff for the
Vermeers. It was to a different butcher she went, not the one her
father's household used. She feels the tang of blood in the air and the
smell of meat markets, and notes that Pieter, the butcher for the
Vermeer household, is less meticulous about keeping his apron clean of
spots of blood. Further on Griet confesses: “I crushed lavender and
hid it under my chemise to mask the
smell of meat that seemed to hang
about me even when I was
far from the Meat Hall.”

The ‘display
of
joints, chops, tongue, pigs’ feet, sausages’ would be enough
to make any vegetarian blanch. Sunil called them ‘spare parts’ of
animals and referred to boti
curry, often cooked in Fort Kochi, defined as a curry made with lamb
gizzards cooked in a spicy gravy. It is also referred to as tripe in
Western countries.

Saras
recounted an experience when she was invited by a patient of her
husband in Vypeen and a large table was set out with nothing but meat
dishes. She being a complete vegetarian could not find anything to
eat; in desperation her hostess offered fish curry; when that was declined, then egg curry.
In the end curd and rice saved the day.

KumKum
had a similar experience in her early days when a table was set at
Kurishinkal House, laden with the meat of ‘big animals’ which she couldn't eat
(nor that of beautiful animals like rabbits); she inquired if there
were any vegetables. Santosh, Joe's cousin, replied that since their
practice was to feed their animals only with vegetarian fodder, the Kurishinkals derived
all their veg intake at one remove by eating animals.

8.
KumKum

KumKum in GWAPE pose

In this passage Griet
humours her father who smells linseed oil on her and wants to know
what Vermeer is painting. But instead of describing the painting
being done of her (Girl with a Pearl Earring), which would
have been awkward, she describes the second painting Vermeer was
doing at the same time, (The
Concert). “A
young woman sits at a harpsichord, playing. She is wearing a yellow
and black bodice ....” Griet's father is amused that Van Ruijven
appears in the painting in the pose of playing a lute, for he plays
the lute badly.

Vermeer - The Concert

Pieter comes on Sundays to
their home in the form of a suitor, accepted, nay encouraged, by
Griet's mother. He never inquired why Griet smelled of linseed oil,
or sought any other particulars of her life in the Vermeer household.

Hemjit thought this was
because he was confident, knowing she would belong to him ultimately
(she had had sex with him, after all) and was waiting until she came
out of that phase of her life.

KumKum chimed in that Pieter
could see he was destined for her.

Saras noted Vermeer was
doing two paintings at the same time, which was unusual for the painter.

KumKum alluded to the
astonishing colours in his painting, mentioning indigo blue and cow's
urine, imported from India. Indian yellow, also called euxanthin or
euxanthine, is transparent yellow pigment used in oil painting and
watercolours. The wikipedia entry does consider KumKum's hypothesis
and rejects it for lack of evidence. See

Joe said Vermeer used exotic
and expensive colours in his painting, for example grinding lapis
lazuli for blue. In the novel it is mentioned

The only colour he did
not allow me to handle was ultramarine.
Lapis lazuli was so
expensive, and the process of extracting
a pure blue from the stone
so difficult, that he worked with
it himself.

KumKum claimed Vermeer was
the first to use lapis for ultramarine blue. Using such expensive
pigments when his output was modest may have contributed to his
falling into debt, and his subsequent impoverishment. The prices he got
were nothing like what you could get from royal patrons. Vermeer was
insular, he never travelled from Delft to other wealthy cities to
sell his paintings or obtain commissions.

Zakia referred to a large
mural on exhibit in the Kochi Muziris Biennale currently in session.
Lots of colours have been kept beside the mural to show the sources from
which they have been obtained. The muralist P.K. Sadanandan does not
use chemically derived dyes and this entails his having to do a lot
of research to find the exact shades required. See

1.
Pamela Griet receives the gift of
Christina's pearl earrings and sells it for twenty guilders.

Scarlett Johansson as Griet in GWAPE

The
last thing I had expected from Catharina was an explanation
of why
they ran into debt. Fifteen guilders after all this
time is not so
very much, I wanted to say. Pieter has let it go.
Think no more of
it. But I dared not interrupt her.
“And then there were the
children. Do you know how much
bread eleven children eat?” She
looked up at me briefly, then
back down at the powder-brush.
One
painting’s worth over three years, I answered silently.
One very
fine painting, to a sympathetic baker.
I heard the click of a tile in
the hallway, and the rustle of a
dress being stilled by a hand.
Cornelia, I thought, still spying.
She too is taking her place in the
drama.
I waited, holding back the questions I wanted to ask.

Van
Leeuwenhoek finally spoke. “Griet, when a will has
been drawn up,”
he began in his deep voice, “an inventory of
the family’s
possessions must be taken to establish the assets
while considering
the debts. However, there are private matters
that Catharina would
like to attend to before this is done.”
He glanced at Catharina.
She continued to play with the powderbrush.

They
do not like each other still, I thought. They would not
even be in
the same room together if they could help it.

Van
Leeuwenhoek picked up a piece of paper from the table.
“He wrote
this letter to me ten days before he died,” he said to
me. He
turned to Catharina. “You must do this,” he ordered,
“for they
are yours to give, not his or mine. As executor of his
will I should
not even be here to witness this, but he was my
friend, and I would
like to see his wish granted.”

Catharina
snatched the paper from his hand. “My husband
was not a sick man,
you know,” she addressed herself to me.
“He was not really ill
until a day or two before his death. It was
the strain of the debt
that drove him into a frenzy.”

I
could not imagine my master in a frenzy.

Catharina
looked down at the letter, glanced at van
Leeuwenhoek, then opened
her jewelry box. “He asked that
you have these.” She picked out
the earrings and after a moment’s
hesitation laid them on the
table.
I felt faint and closed my eyes, touching the back of the
chair
lightly with my fingers to steady myself.

“I
have not worn them again,” Catharina declared in a bitter
tone. “I
could not.”

I
opened my eyes. “I cannot take your earrings, madam.”

“Why
not? You took them once before. And besides, it’s not
for you to
decide. He has decided for you, and for me. They
are yours now, so
take them.”
I hesitated, then reached over and picked them up.
They
were cool and smooth to the touch, as I had remembered them,
and
in their grey and white curve a world was reflected.

I
took them.

“Now
go,” Catharina ordered in a voice muffled with hidden
tears. “I
have done what he asked. I will do no more.” She stood
up, crumpled
the paper and threw it on the fire. She watched
it flare up, her back
to me.
I felt truly sorry for her. Although she could not see it, I
nodded
to her respectfully, and then to van Leeuwenhoek, who
smiled
at me. “Take care to remain yourself,” he had warned me
so long
ago. I wondered if I had done so. It was not always easy
to know.
I
slipped across the floor, clutching my earrings, my feet
making loose
tiles clink together. I closed the door softly behind
me.
Cornelia
was standing out in the hallway. The brown dress
she wore had been
repaired in several places and was not as
clean as it could be. As I
brushed past her she said in a low,
eager voice, “You could give
them to me.” Her greedy eyes
were laughing.
I reached over and
slapped her.

When
I got back to Market Square I stopped by the star in thecenter
and looked down at the pearls in my hand. I could not
keep them. What
would I do with them? I could not tell Pieter
how I came to have
them—it would mean explaining everything
that had happened so long
ago. I could not wear the earrings anyway—a butcher’s wife did
not wear such things, no
more than a maid did.

I
walked around the star several times. Then I set out for a
place I
had heard of but never been to, tucked away in a back
street behind
the New Church. I would not have visited such a
place ten years
before.
The man’s trade was keeping secrets. I knew that he
would
ask me no questions, nor tell anyone that I had gone to
him.
After seeing so many goods come and go, he was no longer
curious
about the stories behind them. He held the earrings up to
the
light, bit them, took them outside to squint at them.

“Twenty
guilders,” he said.

I
nodded, took the coins he held out, and left without
looking
back.
There were five extra guilders I would not be able to
explain.
I separated five coins from the others and held them tight
in
my fist. I would hide them somewhere that Pieter and my sons
would
not look, some unexpected place that only I knew of.

I
would never spend them.
Pieter would be pleased with the rest of the
coins, the debt
now settled. I would not have cost him anything. A
maid came
free.

2.
Hemjit

Griet's artistic vision
of colours and composition comes out.

Arrangement of five vegetables

“What
have you been doing here, Griet?” he asked.

I
was surprised by the question but knew enough to hide it.
“Chopping
vegetables, sir. For the soup.”

I
always laid vegetables out in a circle, each with its own
section
like a slice of pie. There were five slices: red
cabbage,
onions, leeks, carrots, and turnips. I had used a knife edge
to
shape each slice, and placed a carrot disc in the center.

The
man tapped his finger on the table. “Are they laid out in
the order
in which they will go into the soup?” he suggested,
studying the
circle.
“No, sir.” I hesitated. I could not say why I had laid
out the
vegetables as I did. I simply set them as I felt they should
be,
but I was too frightened to say so to a gentleman.

“I
see you have separated the whites,” he said, indicating
the turnips
and onions. “And then the orange and the purple,
they do not sit
together. Why is that?” He picked up a shred
of cabbage and a piece
of carrot and shook them like dice in
his hand.
I looked at my
mother, who nodded slightly.

“The
colors fight when they are side by side, sir.”

...

I
looked out. It was a breezy day, with clouds disappearing
behind the
New Church tower.

“What
color are those clouds?”

“Why,
white, sir.”
He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Are they?”
I
glanced at them. “And grey. Perhaps it will snow.”

“Come,
Griet, you can do better than that. Think of your
vegetables.”
“My
vegetables, sir?”

He
moved his head slightly. I was annoying him again. My
jaw
tightened.
“Think of how you separated the whites. Your turnips
and
your onions—are they the same white?”
Suddenly I understood.
“No. The turnip has green in it, the
onion yellow.”
“Exactly.
Now, what colors do you see in the clouds?”

“There
is some blue in them,” I said after studying them for a
few
minutes. “And—yellow as well. And there is some green!” I
became
so excited I actually pointed. I had been looking at clouds
all
my life, but I felt as if I saw them for the first time at that
moment.

He
smiled. “You will find there is little pure white in clouds,
yet
people say they are white. Now do you understand why I
do not need
the blue yet?”
“Yes, sir.” I did not really understand, but did
not want to
admit it. I felt I almost knew.

3.
Thommo

Griet asks Vermeer about
the difference between Catholic paintings and Protestant paintings.

The
next morning it was painful to look at the painting. The
blocks of
false colors had been painted, and he had built up her
eyes, and the
high dome of her forehead, and part of the folds of the mantle
sleeve. The rich yellow in particular filled me
with the guilty
pleasure that my mother’s words had condemned.
I tried instead to
picture the finished painting hanging
at Pieter the father’s stall,
for sale for ten guilders, a simple
picture of a woman writing a
letter.

I
could not do it.

He
was in a good mood that afternoon, or else I would not
have asked
him. I had learned to gauge his mood, not from the
little he said or
the expression on his face—he did not show
much—but from the way
he moved about the studio and attic.
When he was happy, when he was
working well, he strode purposefully
back and forth, no hesitation in
his stride, no movement
wasted. If he had been a musical man, he
would have
been humming or singing or whistling under his breath.
When
things did not go well, he stopped, stared out the
window,
shifted abruptly, started up the attic ladder only to climb
back
down before he was halfway up.
“Sir,” I began when he came
up to the attic to mix linseed oil
into the white lead I had finished
grinding. He was working on
the fur of the sleeve. She had not come
that day, but I had discovered
he was able to paint parts of her
without her being
there.
He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Griet?”

He
and Maertge were the only people in the house who always
called me by
my name.

“Are
your paintings Catholic paintings?”

He
paused, the bottle of linseed oil poised over the shell that
held the
white lead. “Catholic paintings,” he repeated. He lowered
his
hand, tapping the bottle against the table top. “What
do you mean
by a Catholic painting?”
I had spoken before thinking. Now I did
not know what to
say. I tried a different question. “Why are there
paintings in
Catholic churches?”
“Have you ever been inside a
Catholic church, Griet?”

“No,
sir.”

“Then
you have not seen paintings in a church, or statues or
stained
glass?”
“No.”

“You
have seen paintings only in houses, or shops, or inns?”

“And
at the market.”

“Yes,
at the market. Do you like looking at paintings?”

“I
do, sir.” I began to think he would not answer me, that he
would
simply ask me endless questions.

“What
do you see when you look at one?”

“Why,
what the painter has painted, sir.”

Although
he nodded, I felt I had not answered as he wished.

“So
when you look at the painting down in the studio, what
do you
see?”
“I do not see the Virgin Mary, that is certain.” I said
this more
in defiance of my mother than in answer to him.

He
gazed at me in surprise. “Did you expect to see the
Virgin
Mary?”
“Oh no, sir,” I replied, flustered.
“Do you
think the painting is Catholic?”
“I don’t know, sir. My mother
said—”

“Your
mother has not seen the painting, has she?”
“No.”
“Then she
cannot tell you what it is that you see or do
not see.”
“No.”
Although he was right, I did not like him to be critical
of my
mother.
“It’s not the painting that is Catholic or Protestant,”
he said,
“but the people who look at it, and what they expect to
see. A
painting in a church is like a candle in a dark room—we use
it
to see better. It is the bridge between ourselves and God. But
it
is not a Protestant candle or a Catholic candle. It is simply
a
candle.”
“We do not need such things to help us to see God,”
I countered.
“We have His Word, and that is enough.”

He
smiled. “Did you know, Griet, that I was brought up as
a
Protestant? I converted when I married. So you do not need
to
preach to me. I have heard such words before.”

I
stared at him. I had never known anyone to decide no
longer to be a
Protestant. I did not believe you really could
switch. And yet he
had.

4.
Sunil

Griet rearranges the
scene of a painting to add something ‘to snag the eye’.

A Lady Writing a Letter - Vermeer (c. 1665-1666)

It
came to me then that the scene was too neat. Although I
valued
tidiness over most things, I knew from his other paintings
that there
should be some disorder on the table, something
to snag the eye. I
pondered each object—the jewelry
box, the blue table rug, the
pearls, the letter, the inkwell—and
decided what I would change. I
returned quietly to the attic,
surprised by my bold thoughts.

Once
it was clear to me what he should do to the scene, I
waited for him
to make the change.

He
did not move anything on the table. He adjusted the
shutters
slightly, the tilt of her head, the angle of her quill. But
he did
not change what I had expected him to.

I
thought about it while I was wringing out sheets, while I
was turning
the spit for Tanneke, while I was wiping the
kitchen tiles, while I
was rinsing colors. While I lay in bed at
night I thought about it.
Sometimes I got up to look again. No,
I was not mistaken.
He returned
the camera to van Leeuwenhoek.

Whenever
I looked at the scene my chest grew tight as if
something were
pressing on it.

He
set a canvas on the easel and painted a coat of lead white
and chalk
mixed with a bit of burnt sienna and yellow ocher.

My
chest grew tighter, waiting for him.

He
sketched lightly in reddish brown the outline of the
woman and of
each object.

When
he began to paint great blocks of false colors, I
thought my chest
would burst like a sack that has been filled
with too much flour.
As
I lay in bed one night I decided I would have to make the
change
myself.

The
next morning I cleaned, setting the jewelry box back
carefully,
relining the pearls, replacing the letter, polishing and
replacing
the inkwell. I took a deep breath to ease the pressure
in my chest.
Then in one quick movement I pulled the front
part of the blue cloth
onto the table so that it flowed out of the
dark shadows under the
table and up in a slant onto the table
in front of the jewelry box. I
made a few adjustments to the
lines of the folds, then stepped back.
It echoed the shape of van
Ruijven’s wife’s arm as she held the
quill.

Yes,
I thought, and pressed my lips together. He may send
me away for
changing it, but it is better now.

That
afternoon I did not go up to the attic, although there
was plenty of
work for me there. I sat outside on the bench
with Tanneke and mended
shirts. He had not gone to his studio
that morning, but to the Guild,
and had dined at van
Leeuwenhoek’s. He had not yet seen the
change.
I waited anxiously on the bench. Even Tanneke, who tried
to
ignore me these days, noted my mood. “What’s the matter with
you, girl?” she asked. She had taken to calling me girl like
her
mistress. “You’re acting like a chicken that knows it’s for
the
slaughter.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Tell me about what
happened when
Catharina’s brother came here last. I heard about it
at the market.
They still mention you,” I added, hoping to distract
and
flatter her, and to cover up how clumsily I moved away from
her
question.
For a moment Tanneke sat up straighter, until she
remembered
who was asking. “That’s not your business,” she
snapped.
“That’s family business, not for the likes of you.”

A
few months before she would have delighted in telling a
story that
set her in the best light. But it was me who was asking,
and I was
not to be trusted or humored or favored with her
words, though it
must have pained her to pass up the chance to
boast.
Then I saw
him—he was walking towards us up the Oude
Langendijck, his hat
tilted to shield his face from the spring
sunlight, his dark cloak
pushed back from his shoulders. As he
drew up to us I could not look
at him.
“Afternoon, sir,” Tanneke sang out in a completely
different
tone.
“Hello, Tanneke. Are you enjoying the sun?”

“Oh
yes, sir. I do like the sun on my face.”
I kept my eyes on the
stitches I had made. I could feel him
looking at me.
After he went
inside Tanneke hissed, “Say hello to the master
when he speaks to
you, girl. Your manners are a disgrace.”
“It was you he spoke
to.”
“And so he should. But you needn’t be so rude or you’ll
end
up in the street, with no place here.”
He must be upstairs
now, I thought. He must have seen what
I’ve done.

I
waited, barely able to hold my needle. I did not know exactly
what I
expected. Would he berate me in front of Tanneke?
Would he raise his
voice for the first time since I had come to
live in his house? Would
he say the painting was ruined?

Perhaps
he would simply pull down the blue cloth so that it
hung as it had
before. Perhaps he would say nothing to me.

Later
that night I saw him briefly as he came down for supper.
He did not
appear to be one thing or the other, happy or
angry, unconcerned or
anxious. He did not ignore me but he
did not look at me either.
When
I went up to bed I checked to see if he had pulled the
cloth to hang
as it had before I touched it.

He
had not. I held up my candle to the easel—he had resketched
in
reddish brown the folds of the blue cloth. He had made my change.

I
lay in bed that night smiling in the dark.

The
next morning he came in as I was cleaning around the
jewelry box. He
had never before seen me making my measurements.
I had laid my arm
along one edge and moved the box
to dust under and around it. When I
looked over he was watching
me. He did not say anything. Nor did I—I
was concerned
to set the box back exactly as it had been. Then I
sponged the
blue cloth with a damp rag, especially careful with the
new
folds I had made. My hands shook a little as I cleaned.

When
I was done I looked up at him.

“Tell
me, Griet, why did you change the tablecloth?” His
tone was the
same as when he had asked me about the vegetables
at my parents’
house.
I thought for a moment. “There needs to be some disorder
in
the scene, to contrast with her tranquillity,” I explained.
“Something
to tease the eye. And yet it must be something
pleasing
to the eye as well, and it is, because the cloth and her arm
are
in a similar position.”
There was a long pause. He was gazing
at the table. I waited,
wiping my hands against my apron.

“I had not thought I would
learn something from a maid,” he
said at last.

5.
Joe

Griet’s dramatic
confrontation with Catharina about the earrings (724 words).

It was Maria Thins who
finally spoke.

“Well, girl, my daughter
wants to know how you came to be wearing her earrings.” She said it
as if she did not expect me to answer.

I studied her old face. She
was not going to admit to helping me get the earrings. Nor would he,
I knew. I did not know what to say. So I did not say anything.

“Did you steal the key to
my jewelry box and take my earrings?”

Catharina spoke as if she
were trying to convince herself of what she said. Her voice was
shaky.

“No, madam.” Although I
knew it would be easier for everyone if I said I had stolen them, I
could not lie about myself.

“Don’t lie to me. Maids
steal all the time. You took my earrings!”

“Are they missing now,
madam?”

For a moment Catharina
looked confused, as much by my asking a question as by the question
itself. She had obviously not checked her jewelry box since seeing
the painting. She had no idea if the earrings were gone or not. But
she did not like me asking the questions. “Quiet, thief. They’ll
throw you in prison,” she hissed, “and you won’t see sunlight
for years.” She winced again. Something was wrong with her.

“But, madam—”

“Catharina, you must not
get yourself into a state,” he interrupted me. “Van Ruijven will
take the painting away as soon as it is dry and you can put it from
your mind.”

He did not want me to speak
either. It seemed no one did. I wondered why they had asked me
upstairs at all when they were so afraid of what I might say.

I might say, “What about
the way he looked at me for so many hours while he painted this
painting?” I might say, “What about your mother and your husband,
who have gone behind your back and deceived you?”

Or I might simply say, “Your
husband touched me, here, in this room.”

They did not know what I
might say.

Catharina was no fool. She
knew the real matter was not the earrings. She wanted them to be, she
tried to make them be so, but she could not help herself. She turned
to her husband.

“Why,” she asked, “have
you never painted me?”

As they gazed at each other
it struck me that she was taller than he, and, in a way, more solid.

“You and the children are
not a part of this world,” he said. “You are not meant to be.”

“And she is?” Catharina
cried shrilly, jerking her head at me.

He did not answer. I wished
that Maria Thins and Cornelia and I were in the kitchen or the
Crucifixion room, or out in the market. It was an affair for a man
and his wife to discuss alone.

“And with my earrings?”

Again he was silent, which
stirred Catharina even more than his words had. She began to shake
her head so that her blond curls bounced around her ears. “I will
not have this in my own house,” she declared. “I will not have
it!” She looked around wildly. When her eyes fell on the palette
knife a shiver ran through me. I took a step forward at the same time
as she moved to the cupboard and grabbed the knife. I stopped, unsure
of what she would do next.

He knew, though. He knew his
own wife. He moved with Catharina as she stepped up to the painting.
She was quick but he was quicker—he caught her by the wrist as she
plunged the diamond blade of the knife towards the painting. He
stopped it just before the blade touched my eye. From where I stood I
could see the wide eye, a flicker of earring he had just added, and
the winking of the blade as it hovered before the painting. Catharina
struggled but he held her wrist firmly, waiting for her to drop the
knife. Suddenly she groaned. Flinging the knife away, she clutched
her belly. The knife skidded across the tiles to my feet, then spun
and spun, slower and slower, as we all stared at it. It came to a
stop with the blade pointed at me.

6.
Saras

Griet's father wants her
to describe the painting and the story behind it.

Saras

My
father wanted me to describe the painting once
more.
“But nothing
has changed since the last time,” I
said.
“I want to hear it
again,” he insisted, hunching over in his
chair to get nearer to
the fire. He sounded like Frans when he
was a little boy and had been
told there was nothing left to eat
in the hotpot. My father was often
impatient during March,
waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease,
the sun to reappear.
March was an unpredictable month, when it was
never clear
what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and
grey
skies shut over the town again.

March
was the month I was born.

Being
blind seemed to make my father hate winter even
more. His other
senses strengthened, he felt the cold acutely,
smelled the stale air
in the house, tasted the blandness of the
vegetable stew more than my
mother. He suffered when the
winter was long.
I felt sorry for him.
When I could I smuggled to him treats
from Tanneke’s kitchen—stewed
cherries, dried apricots, a cold
sausage, once a handful of dried
rose petals I had found in
Catharina’s cupboard.
“The baker’s
daughter stands in a bright corner by a window,”
I began patiently.
“She is facing us, but is looking out the window,
down to her
right. She is wearing a yellow and black fitted
bodice of silk and
velvet, a dark blue skirt, and a white cap
that hangs down in two
points below her chin.”
“As you wear yours?” my father asked.
He had never asked
this before, though I had described the cap the
same way each
time.
“Yes, like mine. When you look at the cap long
enough,” I
added hurriedly, “you see that he has not really
painted it
white, but blue, and violet, and yellow.”

“But
it’s a white cap, you said.”

“Yes,
that’s what is so strange. It’s painted many colors, but
when you
look at it, you think it’s white.”

“Tile
painting is much simpler,” my father grumbled. “You use
blue and
that’s all. A dark blue for the outlines, a light blue for
the
shadows. Blue is blue.”

And
a tile is a tile, I thought, and nothing like his paintings.
I wanted
him to understand that white was not simply white. It
was a lesson my
master had taught me.

“What
is she doing?” he asked after a moment.

“She
has one hand on a pewter pitcher sitting on a table and
one on a
window she’s partly opened. She’s about to pick up the
pitcher
and dump the water from it out the window, but she’s
stopped in the
middle of what she’s doing and is either dreaming
or looking at
something in the street.”
“Which is she doing?”

“I
don’t know. Sometimes it seems one thing, sometimes the
other.”
My
father sat back in his seat, frowning. “First you say the
cap is
white but not painted white. Then you say the girl is
doing one thing
or maybe another. You’re confusing me.” He
rubbed his brow as if
his head ached.
“I’m sorry, Father. I’m trying to describe it
accurately.”

“But
what is the story in the painting?”

“His paintings don’t
tell stories.”
He did not respond. He had been difficult all
winter. If
Agnes had been there she would have been able to cheer
him.
She had always known how to make him laugh.

7.
Zakia

Griet meets Pieter the
butcher at the Meat Hall.

The
Meat Hall was just behind the Town Hall, south and to
the west of
Market Square. Inside were thirty-two stalls—there
had been
thirty-two butchers in Delft for generations. It was
busy with
housewives and maids choosing, bartering and buying
for their
families, and men carrying carcasses back and
forth. Sawdust on the
floor soaked up blood and clung to shoes
and hems of dresses. There
was a tang of blood in the air that
always made me shiver, though at
one time I had gone there
every week and ought to have grown used to
the smell. Still, I
was pleased to be in a familiar place. As we
passed between the
stalls the butcher we used to buy our meat from
before my father’s
accident called out to me. I smiled at him,
relieved to see
a face I knew. It was the first time I had smiled all
day.

It
was strange to meet so many new people and see so many
new things in
one morning, and to do so apart from all the familiar
things that
made up my life. Before, if I met someone
new I was always surrounded
by family and neighbours. If I went
to a new place I was with Frans
or my mother or father and felt
no threat. The new was woven in with
the old, like the darning
in a sock.

Frans
told me not long after he began his apprenticeship that
he had almost
run away, not from the hard work, but because
he could not face the
strangeness day after day. What kept him
there was knowing that our
father had spent all his savings on
the apprentice fee, and would
have sent him right back if he
had come home. Besides, he would find
much more strangeness
out in the world if he went elsewhere.

“I
will come and see you,” I whispered to the butcher, “when
I am
alone.” Then I hurried to catch up with Tanneke and
Maertge.
They
had stopped at a stall farther along. The butcher there was
a
handsome man, with graying blond curls and bright blue eyes.

“Pieter,
this is Griet,” Tanneke said. “She will be fetching the
meat for
us now. You’re to add it to our account as usual.”

I
tried to keep my eyes on his face, but I could not help
glancing down
at his blood-splattered apron. Our butcher always
wore a clean apron
when he was selling, changing it
whenever he got blood on it.
“Ah.”
Pieter looked me over as if I were a plump chicken he
was considering
roasting. “What would you like today, Griet?”

I
turned to Tanneke. “Four pounds of chops and a pound of
tongue,”
she ordered.

Pieter
smiled. “And what do you think of that, miss?” he
addressed
Maertge. “Don’t I sell the best tongue in Delft?”

Maertge
nodded and giggled as she gazed at the display of
joints, chops,
tongue, pigs’ feet, sausages.

“You’ll find, Griet,
that I have the best meat and the most
honest scales in the hall,”
Pieter remarked as he weighed the
tongue. “You’ll have no
complaints about me.”
I stared at his apron and swallowed. Pieter
put the chops and
tongue into the pail I carried, winked at me and
turned to serve
the next customer.
We went next to the fish stalls,
just beside the Meat Hall.
Seagulls hovered above the stalls, waiting
for the fishheads and
innards the fishmongers threw into the canal.
Tanneke introduced
me to their fishmonger—also different from ours.
I was
to alternate each day between meat and fish.
When we left I did
not want to go back to the house, to
Catharina and the children on
the bench. I wanted to walk
home. I wanted to step into my mother’s
kitchen and hand her
the pailful of chops. We had not eaten meat in
months.

8.
KumKum

Griet's
father smells linseed oil on her and suspects something (537 words).

You
smell of linseed oil.”

My
father spoke in a baffled tone. He did not believe that simply
cleaning a painter’s studio would make the smell linger on my
clothes, my skin, my hair. He was right. It was as if he guessed that
I now slept with the oil in my room, that I sat for hours being
painted and absorbing the scent. He guessed and yet he could not say.
His blindness took away his confidence so that he did not trust the
thoughts in his mind.

A year
before I might have tried to help him, suggest what he was thinking,
humour him into speaking his mind. Now, however, I simply watched him
struggle silently, like a beetle that has fallen onto its back and
cannot turn itself over. My mother had also guessed, though she did
not know what she had guessed. Sometimes I could not meet her eye.
When I did her look was a puzzle of anger held back, of curiosity, of
hurt. She was trying to understand what had happened to her daughter.
I had grown used to the smell of linseed oil. I even kept a small
bottle of it by my bed. In the mornings when I was getting dressed I
held it up to the window to admire the colour, which was like lemon
juice with a drop of lead-tin yellow in it. I wear that colour now, I
wanted to say. He is painting me in that colour.

Instead,
to take my father’s mind off the smell, I described the other
painting my master was working on. “A young woman sits at a
harpsichord, playing. She is wearing a yellow and black bodice—the
same the baker’s daughter wore for her painting—a white satin
skirt and white ribbons in her hair. Standing in the curve of the
harpsichord is another woman, who is holding music and singing. She
wears a green, fur-trimmed housecoat and a blue dress. In between the
women is a man sitting with his back to us—”

“Van
Ruijven,” my father interrupted.

“Yes,
van Ruijven. All that can be seen of him is his back, his hair, and
one hand on the neck of a lute.”

“He
plays the lute badly,” my father added eagerly.

“Very
badly. That’s why his back is to us—so we won’t see that he
can’t even hold his lute properly.”

My
father chuckled, his good mood restored. He was always pleased to
hear that a rich man could be a poor musician. It was not always so
easy to bring him back into good humour. Sundays had become so
uncomfortable with my parents that I began to welcome those times
when Pieter the son ate with us. He must have noted the troubled
looks my mother gave me, my father’s querulous comments, the
awkward silences so unexpected between parent and child. He never
said anything about them, never winced or stared or became
tongue-tied himself. Instead he gently teased my father, flattered my
mother, smiled at me.

Pieter
did not ask why I smelled of linseed oil. He did not seem to worry
about what I might be hiding. He had decided to trust me.

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